Check the facts

It's that time of year again when we look back - perhaps not so fondly - on the most noteworthy nonsense from the past 12 months. The year after a presidential election was certainly no letdown from a fact-checking perspective. In 2013, we uncovered falsehoods to fairy tales about immigration, gun control, the IRS, Benghazi and - no surprise here - the Affordable Care Act.

? President Obama's now legendary claim that "if you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan" is actually an old whopper for us. But it smashed into reality this year as insurers canceled individual market plans. In fact, the claim is now a three-time whopper designee: We said as far back as August 2009 that the president simply couldn't make this promise to everyone.

? Republicans claimed Congress was "exempt" from the health care law, when in fact lawmakers face an additional requirement that other Americans don't. A so-called "special subsidy" is nothing more than the standard employer contribution to premiums that the government has long made for its employees. This "exempt" claim actually pertains to a special requirement for Congress and members' staffs: They have to get their insurance through the exchanges, and they're forbidden from continuing to get coverage through their employer, the federal government.

? White House Press Secretary Jay Carney falsely said the State Department had changed only one word of CIA talking points on the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya. But news reports show that State Department comments prompted the CIA to make many alterations, including deleting references to CIA warnings of al-Qaida-linked threats and the possibility of the al-Qaida-linked Ansar al-Sharia being involved.

? Sen. David Vitter, among others, claimed the Senate immigration bill would cost taxpayers $6.3 trillion, citing a Heritage Foundation report. But the report wasn't on the bill itself, and it gave a 50-year cost estimate.

? The IRS' Lois Lerner wrongly told reporters on May 10 that she first learned of employees targeting these groups in 2012 from media reports on conservative organizations that complained about delays. But a Treasury inspector general's report released four days later showed she knew about the flagging of conservative groups nearly a year earlier, and that she tried to correct it.

? The National Rifle Association wrongly claimed that "80% of police say background checks will have no effect" on violent crime. The cited survey in question didn't say that. At all. The self-selected online poll didn't contain a single question asking whether "background checks" would impact "violent crime." And Democrats used an old, thin survey to claim 40 percent of guns were acquired without a background check. That's based on a nearly 20-year-old survey of fewer than 300 people who were asked whether they thought guns they had acquired came from federally licensed dealers.